


Unravelling

by Goldy



Series: Unravelling [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Introspection, Post-Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-28
Updated: 2014-07-28
Packaged: 2018-02-10 17:44:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2034225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldy/pseuds/Goldy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Sometimes, late at night, staring into the darkness of her room, sometimes she thinks she imagined the Doctor.</i> Rose, Post-Doomsday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unravelling

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first Doctor Who fic, eep.

There are things she doesn’t tell them. Things she shared with the Doctor that can’t be put into words, that are beyond the stories, the tales of adventures and near-deaths, and the stars.

She doesn’t tell them that she spent her first Christmas (After—her life fits into neat boxes now, there is Before and After, with the space in between a time she can’t measure) on the beach, cold rain pelting her cheeks, oozing sand between her toes, making her sick for weeks.

She doesn’t tell them that she considered changing her name. _Rose Tyler—this is the story of how I died._ New earth, new father, new job, new house (no _new_ new new Doctor), and it doesn’t seem right that she can still be Rose Tyler.

She once tried signing her name as _Kiwi Tyler_. Then she thought about how the Doctor would have had himself a good laugh. Kiwi—yeah? Like the fruit. _Yeah, like the fruit._

She kept Rose.

Oh, she thinks, she thinks she should feel lucky. Here she is, secure job, two parents and a new brother on the way. It’s a dream, isn’t it? Selfish to wish for more.

_She spent exactly one birthday with the Doctor._

_“Has it really been a year? It doesn’t feel like a year.”_

_“Technically, it’s been a few billion.”_

_She laughed. “Yeah? Felt like a blink of an eye.”_

_“But you, Rose Tyler, you’ve aged exactly one year.”_

_“Well, now, let’s see…” she scrunched up her nose. “If I was born in 1986, and we’re now in… when are we?”_

_“About five-hundred-point-sixty-two-slash-alpha.”_

_“Oh, yes,” Rose said. “That’s a good one, that is. One of the best. So, let’s see here… I suppose that would make me… twenty.” She leaned forward, catching hold of a sleeve with the fingers of one hand. “So… what did you get me?”_

_“Get you?” He said, pretending to me affronted. “Rose Tyler, I’ve taken you around the universe. I’ve shown you things you never even would have dreamed of. And I’m supposed to get you a blinking birthday gift?”_

_“Well… yeah,” Rose said, now grabbing a hand. She bobbed up and down, widening her eyes. “C’mon, then. Don’t draw it out. What did you get me?”_

He gave her a watch. Set to always keep the perfect time, no matter where in the universe they ended up.

She lost it when she was sucked through the vortex.

She has nothing of the Doctor. Nothing. Not a stupid button from his coat, not a photograph, not even a bloody piece of space rock from one of the hundreds of planets he showed her.

Nothing.

Sometimes, late at night, staring into the darkness of her room, sometimes she thinks she imagined the Doctor. It’s fantasy, isn’t it? Traveling through time and space with a man who has no name, with a man nine-hundred-years-old. Who loved her, Rose Tyler, out of all the people in his universe, out of all those companions he traveled with. She must be mad.

She wakes up in the morning and dresses for her day at Torchwood (studying aliens and spaceships and stun rays) and she feels guilty.

_“How many have there been, really?”_

_They’re throwing bits of bread into a pond of ducks, squinting from the bright sunlight. He has an arm around her, and she had her head on his shoulder, and it could have been any time, on any planet, on any of the occasions they weren’t fighting for their lives._

_“Yeah, I’ll need a little more than that, Rose.”_

_She sighed, reluctant to broach the subject, but ever since Sarah Jane, and then Reinette… the curiosity—to invoke an old cliché—was killing her._

_“Your companions,” she said. “The people you’ve… been with.”_

_Alright, so those were possibly two different subjects, but it wasn’t fair that she knew so little about either._

_He sighed and pulled his arm away, resting his elbows on the chain fence overlooking the pond._

_“Doctor?”_

_She didn’t get a reply. Rose bit her bottom lip, and almost dropped the subject, but she deserved an answer, didn’t she? She’d all but chucked her entire life for him, and if he was planning on dumping her in the future the next time a better companion came around, she had better be prepared._

_She moved to stand next to him, idly trailing one finger along the cold metal of the fence. She shivered, suddenly chilled._

_He noticed. “Rose—”_

_“I know I’m different,” she interrupted, finding his eyes. “I suppose I just… I don’t understand why.”_

_He pulled her into a hug, wrapping his coat around both of them, and his whisper so faint, she barely heard it. “Yes, you do.”_

_She closed her eyes._

_They stayed that way until the sunset._

Mum pesters her to move on. Rose thinks that’s rich, coming from her, Jackie who’s back with the husband that died nineteen years previously.

“How can I date, Mum? It’s absurd, really.” She can’t help but chuckle. “Me? Dating? I’ve been to the year five billion. I saw the Earth explode.”

“It’ll be a good story,” Jackie presses. “For the grandkids.”

Rose rolls her eyes. “Forget it.”

“Well, it doesn’t have to be right now, sweetheart, but maybe if you just… try it. There’s no harm in trying, now is there?”

Rose shakes her head and looks at the ceiling. Her eyes burn. Too many late nights at the office. Too much work, not enough time with her family. It leaves her raw.

Jackie puts an arm around her, cradling Rose’s head against her shoulder, her fingers running through her hair. “I know how you miss him, sweetheart.

Rose closes her eyes, and listens to the faint drum of her own heartbeat in her ears.

_The first time he kissed her was after she piloted the TARDIS for the first time._

_Sort of._

_“Just pull that lever—no, that one, good, three tugs, excellent, now pound the time cube with—oh, no, don’t do that—”_

_CRASH._

_The TARDIS screeched to a messy landing, tumbling Rose onto her back. She lay still, winded, the ship creaking and protesting around her. The Doctor was on his feet, pulling and shifting levers, moving with hasty inelegance. They squealed to a stop, and a great waft of steam hissed out of the controls._

_Rose laughed._

_The Doctor held out two hands to pull her to her feet, and she managed, using one of his arms to keep herself upright, her other hand clutching her stomach._

_“Rose,” he said, waggling his eyebrows, “you did it.”_

_They hugged, both of them laughing, and then he pulled away, took her face with both hands and kissed her. Soundly._

_“Now,” he said, drawing away and fixing his tie. “Don’t ever do it again.”_

_“Oh, I don’t think so,” Rose said._

_He looked up. “What?”_

_She moved forward, untucked his tie, and raised her eyebrows. “Where I come from, that would hardly count as a proper snog. And Doctor? I know how you hate to be found… lacking in anything.”_

_His grin matched hers. “Nine-hundred years, and I can’t even get a stupid kiss done right.”_

_“Oh, shut up,” Rose said, tugging down on the tie._

There are things she doesn’t tell them. Mum, Dad, and Mickey. She doesn’t tell them that she’s heading a new file at Torchwood, one that might be able to open temporal folds.

She doesn’t explain that this new file, the one that could send her back, that it’s the thing making her work late, that it’s the reason behind the circles under her eyes, her loss of appetite. How could she explain? Besides which, it’s absolutely top secret, privy to only a handful of scientists and experts.

( _Am I ever going to see you again?_

 _You can’t_ ).

Honestly, it would be of the outmost folly, it could cause any number of universes to bleed into each other. And even if it _did_ work, she could end up in the wrong one, a world without dogs or shrimp or any other infinite possibilities.

Rose knows all of that.

Rose knows all of that, but she still puts in the overtime, she still goes over every scrap, every single piece of data they have. She works until her eyes water and her head aches.

But by god, she won’t believe it’s impossible, not after the things she’s seen.

_“How long are you going to stay with me?”_

She always said the same thing.

“Forever.”

And he always looked sad, like he knew she was lying, never quite grasping that she wasn’t.


End file.
